Increases that could have been done without. Thefts, with or without violence, and intentional assault and battery, particularly outside the family sphere, have started to rise again around the Olympic sites in Île-de-France last week, according to data published Thursday by the statistics department of the Ministry of the Interior (SSMSI).
Since the end of July, the SSMSI has exceptionally published a weekly monitoring of crime and offence indicators recorded during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The data published this Thursday concern the week of July 29 to August 4, which is the first time a period “including Olympic events every day”, the study underlines.
In Île-de-France, intentional assault and battery increased by 10% compared to the previous week, and even by 20% when committed outside the family sphere. Violent thefts (+17%) and non-violent thefts (+6%), particularly on public transport (+8%), also saw significant increases during this week, as did burglaries (+6%).
On the other hand, vehicle-related thefts (-13%) and wilful damage and destruction (-5%) continued their decline already observed since mid-July. After two weeks of sharp increases, acts of insult and violence against persons in authority, attributed to the strong presence of law enforcement in the streets, declined (-8%).
An increase in drug consumption
Finally, the number of people accused of drug use has increased by 7% around the Olympic sites in Île-de-France compared to last week, while remaining lower than the first week of July.
The SSMSI stresses that “weekly monitoring and the breakdown of statistics on recorded delinquency by geographical area can lead to observing a low, or even very low, number of crimes and offences, which can make weekly trends volatile”. It therefore specifies that these data “must therefore be interpreted with caution”.
“Generally speaking, any weekly change below 10% must be commented on with caution,” he explains. And adds that he does not “disseminate all of the indicators” that he usually follows, since some “present numbers that are too low for a relevant weekly analysis (homicides, sexual violence, drug trafficking for example).”
